SPAM .. your thoughts.

At the moment I rely on potential clients coming on to my site through the search engines and subscribing to my services. I have a few questions to see if you guys can help me out.

Our clientbase are owners of holiday properties who want to rent out their property for rental, and I was thinking of starting to send out an email, once or twice a month to potential clients.

Now, these owners really are self employed, ie. businesses because they pay tax, national insurance on anything they earn through the rentals, so if I emailed them it would be business to business marketing - are any of you aware that if this type of marketing is allowed within US & European spam laws?

Secondly, if you wanted owners to advertise on your site, what type of keywords would you be optimising your site for - Ive tried various tactics, but none of them have had good results in bringing in potential clients.

Darren

 

Not sure about the lagalities but I get a lot of B2B 'offers'. As long as you went out of your way to make sure it's relevant and a genuinely interesting offer for that particular recipient AND you are very clear that you WILL honour any 'please don't send this again' requests then I don't really mind getting these e-mails.

It only becomes SPAM in my opinion when I get the same shit over and over again even after telling them to piss off.

Tact is the key here. Politeness as well. Make sure it's clear how to 'unsubscribe' and honour that choice.

About your second question; as long as your visitors are within the potential advertiser's target audience/demographics then I don't think you need to rank for specific KWs. As long as you can back up your offer with solid and clear statistics then it shouldn't be too hard to get them on board.

When I get advertising offers I always try to get a month or so free. Some deal can be expensive to 'try'. I don't think it's unfair to get a free trial period and as a bonus, you will have their details for future follow-ups.

 

Thanks TOPS for the reply!

I suppose that I am not sending an email to anyone, it's marketing the site to specific, relevant clientbase. I've always been put off by sending emails simply because its so easy for someone to get pissy and report me to my ISP or get put on a blacklist of some type.

Cheers